


Icons

by sadoeuphemist



Category: The Incredibles (2004)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 17:31:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13369671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadoeuphemist/pseuds/sadoeuphemist
Summary: They are two of a kind. They are going to make a god together.





	Icons

Edna Mode is looking at a child. No, at a child's idea of what an adult looks like. His face is fat and lantern-jawed, he smiles with buck teeth. His hair rises away from his head as if in flames, a garish coiffure he must have felt very proud of styling. His torso swells out massively, his legs are tiny, and he looks terrible in his suit. His pant legs bag and his tie is sloppily knotted and his armholes are too low and he has undone his cufflinks like a madman. White plasticky bracers peek out from his sleeves. He is every bit a child playing dress-up, and Edna wants to put him in shorts and admire his knobby knees.

Edna loves him. Edna scootches to the edge of her chair and lets her legs hang down and giddily kicks her feet. They can be children together.

They have met at a party for some tedious politician, begun with idle chit-chat, and then quietly and giddily descended into whispers, scampering off together to a private alcove. Buddy Pine is a reclusive mogul in the arms industry, and Edna is a fashion goddess, but there is a curious overlap in their fields - the warmongers of the world want to look fabulous behind their podiums, after all. But beyond that, they have recognized the same stunted aspirations in each other. They are both currently doing the next-best-thing, they are both simply biding their time. They were both meant for something greater than this.

"These are just preliminary ideas," Buddy says, and spreads the papers out in front of her. They have been ripped from a spiral-bound notebook, hand-drawn sketches in scribbly ink. It's Buddy, in various sizes and poses, each one with an S scrawled over him, growing larger and more vivid with each iteration, as if he hopes the logo will eventually swallow him whole. "But I was thinking, like, a whole yin-yang thing?"

"Black and white?" muses Edna, pursing her lips. Buddy Pine is undoubtedly a genius in weapons design, capable of creating impossibly complex killing machines she cannot begin to comprehend. And yet his sketches are almost hilarious in their single-minded simplicity, just a great big S drawn over a man. She wants to encourage him, though. "A bold choice. Very striking. Very ... uncompromising." She glances up through her coke bottle lenses. "Perhaps a splash of color. A drop of red in the inner curve of the S. Otherwise..."

The eagerness vanishes from Buddy's face; his brow sets into a grim line. "Like him," Buddy sneers, and there is some childhood memory there, some old and long-nurtured scar. "Forget it. I'm not going to be derivative. This is my design! He's got nothing to do with it."

"Dahling, whatever do you mean?" Edna says, leaning forward in concern. Buddy's fists are closed on the notebook paper, his shoulders hunched. He is closing himself up to her, and Edna can sense the opportunity slipping away. She drops down from her chair and scurries over to him on her dainty legs, laying a hand on his elbow. "Dahling. Dahling, talk to me. I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mister Incredible," Buddy spits, and jabs himself in the sternum. "Dot the i, big red spot, right here. A splash of color, right? Forget it. I'm through with him."

The old design flashes back indelibly. In a way, Edna has seen this coming. All lines lead back to a single point. She has clothed gods, and watched them fly above the world of man. She has made icons, holy figures, symbols, objects of devotion. Why should she be so surprised to now find an apostate? He has come to her for one reason, one that she is not sure even he fully understands. He wants to find faith again. He wants her to help him make his own religion.

Buddy blinks suddenly and slumps back in his chair. "Fuck. Guess I'm not through with him, huh?" he says, and manages an abashed smile. "Oh, fuck," he says again, and buries his fat face in his hands. "All I want to do is forget about him," he says, his voice muffled, and he sounds like a child about to cry. "Living well is the best revenge, right? I've lived well," he says, trying to convince himself. "I've lived so goddamn well."

"Of course you have, dahling," Edna croons, standing on tiptoe to pat his shoulder. "There's no shame in it, dahling. You mustn't blame yourself. Superheroes like Mister Incredible - they inspire emotions in people. Seeing a man lift a train above his head - and you must have been so young at the time, too! So impressionable!" Edna is poor at consolation. She is accustomed to a more glamorous cruelty - a fist that can crush brick, a dress that can inspire a thousand sweatshop knockoffs. She wishes he would get over it. She wishes they could get back to the fun part.

"I've been killing them," Buddy says flatly, sitting back upright. His face is calm again and there is no inflection to his voice. "The superheroes. I've been luring them out of retirement and killing them." The corner of his lip turns up. "They _are_ cool. Whizz bam pow! Faster than a speeding bullet!" His smile is crooked, twisting. "They die, so they're not very effective at all, but ... for a while, they look like they're having fun." Buddy releases his drawings, smooths them back out on the table. "I'd like to have fun."

Edna looks down at the black and white drawings, and all of a sudden something slips into place. The design, in fact, is perfect as it is. "Buddy," she says. "This is a supervillain's costume."

Buddy looks at her slyly out of the corner of his eye. "Is it?" he says.

Edna has been so bored these past years, clothing vacuous fashion models who move with a studied indifference to the clothes she drapes on them. She wants to see her designs move again, to flex on a physically perfect frame. She wants to see bullets bounce off them, she wants to see them untouched in flame. She wants the world to lurch into chaos, just to oblige her. She could make Buddy a god, and for a few years he would be joyous, lording her designs over the rest of the world. And then he would grow bored and bitter, and he would commodify his godhood and mass-produce it and sell it to the world, just like he's done with everything else. Edna Mode, off the rack. She grits her teeth and shudders. Buddy would be so perfect for her purposes, if only he never grew up. If only he could remain a child forever.

"Yes, yes," Edna muses, and bends over the papers, taking out a pencil. She slowly sketches a flowing shape, flapping out in the wind defiantly. Buddy leans over her, rapt, once again slipping back into childhood fantasy. "All it needs," she says, "is a cape."


End file.
